Tone Madison

Musician and arts organizer Evan Fernandez talks with Aaron Grych about the importance of managing the HQ practice space for local bands on the near North Side as well as his own ensemble, The Porch Flowers.

"...If you have a network, bring them together, then tell them to bring their friends. Have an open door, be inclusive, and you're gonna end up just building something before your very eyes, before you even really know it."

Creating a music community on the isthmus with "Evan's style" Musician and arts organizer Evan Fernandez discusses the importance of managing the HQ practice space for local bands and his own ensemble, The Porch Flowers.

"...This is a challenge that really interests me as a filmmaker: of 'empty space' or the question about whether or not the camera and its mere presence in space can index a historical trace or the latency or the presence of a ghost past. Can that be transmitted purely by the presence of the camera?"

Milwaukee filmmaker Ben Balcom talks extensively with Arts Editor Grant Phipps about his latest experimental short, THE PHALANX, which is premiering locally at the Chazen Museum of Art during the 2026 Wisconsin Film Festival on April 12.

Inspiriting radical communal aspirations: an interview with Ben Balcom on "The Phalanx" The Milwaukee filmmaker's latest experimental short premieres locally at the Chazen Museum during the 2026 Wisconsin Film Festival on April 12.

"Part girlhood diary, part craft lecture, and part reality-TV show confession, Low's debut full-length poetry collection, REPLICA, takes us from the spaces of childhood (playgrounds, hair salons, elders' bedsides) to those of adulthood (graduate school parties, Reddit rabbit holes, the home shared with a partner) and charts the nuanced ways the narrator has grappled with her proximity to and relationships with whiteness," writes Rodlyn-mae Banting.

Lisa Low's "Replica" grapples with racial alienation and whiteness Moving from childhood to adulthood, the author's new poetry collection confronts and reconciles expectations in order to live authentically.